Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/576

 which would bring the wage again to a point below its former scale.

Neither can the wage fall permanently far below what is necessary to support life, for then arise emigration, celibacy, and avoidance of child-bearing, and, finally, a reduction of the number of laborers, which then diminishes still more the supply of hands, and therefore brings the wage back to its former position again.

The real average wage, therefore, is fixed by a constant movement about this point of equilibrium, to which it must constantly return, sometimes rising a little above it (period of prosperity in some or all industries), sometimes falling a little below it (period of more or less general distress and industrial crises).

The limitation of the average wage to the amount necessary to exist and propagate the race under the accepted standard of living in a community—that, I repeat, is the inexorable and cruel law which determines the wage under present conditions.

This law can be denied by no one. I could cite as many authorities for it as there are great and famous names in economic science, and even from the Liberal school itself, for it is just the Liberal school of political economy which has discovered this law and proved it. This inexorable and cruel law, Gentlemen, you must above all things fix deeply in your minds and base upon it all your thinking.

In this connection I can give you and the whole working class an infallible means of escaping once for all the many attempts to deceive and mislead you. To everyone who talks to you about the improvement of the situation of the working class, you must first put the question: Does he acknowledge the existence of this law, or not? If he does not, you must say to yourself at the start that this man is either trying to deceive you, or has the most pitiable ignorance in the science of political economy; for, as I said, there is not a single economist of the Liberal school worthy of mention who denies it—Adam Smith as well as Say,